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Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-bey or emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open to watch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they slumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the bey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy hours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary languor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamless sleep; and there, still, were the white yatags for the guests to sit cross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the final swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and the cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, the haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes, and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and birds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had burned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and mumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old Haroun, who dozed.
"The elephant who is to reach us this evening, is a black elephant descended from the lines of ancient Persia." A chorus of exclamations swept the circle, before the gurgle of hookahs took the moment, as the mahouts gave themselves to meditation and water-winnowed smoke. Then the trumpet tones of an elephant were heard from far out in the gathering gloom.
Mule flesh was generally preferred to horse, and mule fat supplied good dripping; also an improvised substitute for lamp oil. "The tobacco famine was a great privation, but the garrison did not find the enforced abstention cured their craving, as every kind of substitute was there. An Arab brand, a species similar to that smoked in Indian hookahs, was exhausted early in April.
"Atmosphere is necessary," continued Mr. Tutt. "Real atmosphere! Have 'em in native costume beads, red slippers, hookahs, hoochi-koochis." "I get you," replied Mr. Doon. "You want a regular Turkish village. Well, we'll have it all right. I'll engage the entire Streets of Cairo production from Coney and have Franklin Street crowded with goats, asses and dromedaries.
Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day.
Those who know it call it The Birdcage it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings. The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery.
Their livers are not out of order any more; and as for hookahs, I dare swear there are not two now kept alight within the bills of mortality; and that retired Indians would as soon think of smoking them, as their wives would of burning themselves on their husbands' bodies at the cemetery, Kensal Green, near to the Tyburnian quarter of the city which the Indian world at present inhabits.
No marble halls, no divans and richly carved tables, no hookahs and languid odours of rich perfumes, but a room with cheap modern furniture, china ornaments, and a round table in the middle of the floor, for all the world like the best parlour of the working classes.
The mingled smell of carbolic, hookahs, and coco-nut oil was, I confess, rather overpowering, but when Dr. Russel asked me, "Is this at all interesting to you, or is it merely disgusting?" I could reply truthfully that it was more interesting than disgusting.
The voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like bull-frogs. At last the lama returned.
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